


Homo piscis

by fiendlikequeen



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Crack, F/M, Gen, Mermaids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 05:23:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/858279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiendlikequeen/pseuds/fiendlikequeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'“Mermaids?” said Jack.<br/>“Well, yes. But they are Homo piscis, I should think. That would be an appropriate scientific term for them. But you may call them mermaids,” said Stephen, looking up for a moment and giving Jack a smile...'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homo piscis

**Author's Note:**

> Set some time during HMS Surprise, during Stephen's recovery from his torture and, presumably, post "boiled shit and boobies' blood" incident. Minor spoilers, but nothing serious.
> 
> Also, Jack messes up three idioms, in true Aubrey-style: "birds of a feather flock together", "chickens come home to roost", and "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".

“Do you know what is holding Dr. Maturin up, Mr. M’Alister?” Jack had his spyglass trained out on the barren crop of rock Stephen had pleaded to be allowed to visit. A half a mile away, the glowing white crest was nearly swallowed up by the shimmer of the heat and the sparkling of the sea.

Jack would have ordinarily been ill at ease with Stephen out on one of his expeditions – the man could not be trusted to care for himself, especially when his natural philosophy distracted him from all other matters – but this case was particularly odd and so compounded upon Jack’s inherent fretting. Most peculiarly, Stephen had rowed out on his own, though he was no friend to physical exertion, certainly even less so with his newly weak frame and mangled hands.

“Oh, I do wish you would not question me on this, Jack,” the man had said, cross and red from the heat and the remembrance of his torment at the hands of the French. As he spoke he had taken the oars in hand and given a few shaky pulls. “I am recovering rapidly thanks to the heat and even were I not, I should be quite capable of-“

Whatever he was about to claim he had been about to make was rather undermined by the fact that he pulled far too hard on one oar, causing the boat to jerk sharply and nearly throw him into the water.

Jack would have smiled had he not been so perturbed. Stephen himself had long since vanished and Jack had the natural that something had gone amiss.

“I cannot say, sir,” said M’Alister, his voice bringing Jack once more to the present. Both men turned to stare out the way Stephen had gone.

Jack grunted.

“Pass the word for Bonden,” he called.

“Sir!” the reply came in an instant, accompanied by Bonden himself, standing at attention in that plucky way of his.

“A boat, if you please, Bonden. I would like to see what is keeping Dr. Maturin.”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

 

*****

 

The men were sweating heavily under the noonday sun as they pulled the boat up smartly to the side of the rock. Jack sprang out and, bidding the crew to stay – even Bonden, who tried to follow him – trudged out alone over the rock.

The sun beat down as Jack, tripping over a loose stone, stumbled. The white rock, bleached to a pristine white, blazed in the light and nearly blinded him as he made his way slowly towards where he had seen Stephen last.

A bird waddled by and Jack cursed under his breath, assuming the creature and its brethren to be the reason for Stephen’s tarrying.

“Well, birds of a feather will always come home to roost,” he muttered. After a moment’s pause, scratching his head, he went on. “No, that is not quite right. A bird with feathers is worth none in the bush?”

He practised a few other sayings aloud but the expression he was searching for had escaped him.

And whatever the saying really was, Jack promptly forgot it as he was coming down over the small ridge that had hidden Stephen from his view from the _Surprise_. For there he spotted something that was of undeniably more interest than any kind of peculiar bird.

At first he only saw Stephen, sitting with his notebook in hand, sunhat doing little to prevent his pallid skin from burning scarlet in the sun, and his legs stretched out into the water before him. This was, in and of itself, of no great consequence.

But it was then that Jack caught sight of the thing Stephen was sketching.

“Lord Almighty,” he said, seeing the creature that had leaped high out of the water and right back in, flipping her tail as she dove over the rock where Stephen had perched himself.

Jack could see, even his distance, the creature’s face and figure – a woman from head to waist, naked, clothed only in a long tunic of brown hair with a greenish tinge, her pale skin glowing bright in the sun as rivulets of water cascaded down her hide like so many flashing diamonds.

Ordinarily, a woman naked to the waist would have given Jack a certain kind of pause, but this one was even more compelling. For as she leaped she revealed that, in the place of two legs, she had instead a long tail, scaled green and ending in a gauzy fin that flicked water all over Stephen as she went.

Jack gaped, overcome, as he caught sight of two more of these creatures; one, lying still next to Stephen and the other, not so bold or lively as her first sister but still seeming curious enough, circled about him in the water.

“Stay still, you wily creature, so that I might draw you,” Stephen was protesting at the liveliest creature of the three.

She paid him no mind, flicking her tail and diving under the water for a moment. Stephen sighed in exasperation but she returned quickly, springing out of the sea and over Stephen’s legs before landing with a splash beside him.

“Oh, for the love of all that is holy!” he snapped.

Her sister, a stiller being, was lying in the shallows with her head cushioned on her arms, folded on a rock as she stared up at Stephen with a frank and open curiosity on her face. As Jack watched, she reached out and touched Stephen’s foot, then, a little bolder in her movement, circled his ankle with one small hand. Her hand inched higher, evidently in inquisitiveness, as Jack watched.

It was at that moment that Jack tripped and in sending a cascade of pebbles tumbling toward Stephen, alerted his friend to his presence.

 “Ah, Jack, do mind you feet, will you? A rather curious species of shearwater nests here, and I should not your clumsiness to disturb a nest,” said Stephen, turning and waving airily to Jack. “I mean to take several specimens back with me, and it would not do to have them startled…do you think the sloth would mind a shearwater for a companion? Perhaps he would. Sloths, though amiable creatures, are not accustomed to sharing their quarters with sea birds…”

“My dear man, how on earth-” he began, astonished that Stephen could speak at all while the three female creatures cavorted about him. One had her hand on his thigh, for God’s sake!

He was not to finish as Stephen rebuked him sharply for stepping too near a nest and Jack, giving up and sitting down, stared mutely at the scene before him.

Stephen began to hum discordantly – Jack thought he detected the allegro from Mozart’s clarinet concerto in A major – and went about his work with the most scientific air whilst the three creatures continued their play.

One, when Stephen reached out to touch her hair, gave a gay, sweet laugh and then chattered to her sisters in a high, musical language Jack could not interpret. He could not even guess at the meaning of one word; indeed, he could not even distinguish a single word from the others.

Some time went by and Jack, eyeing the second liveliest of the three, desired to see her more closely. She had a very pleasing figure, her skin as dusky as her sisters’ were pale, with full breasts not concealed entirely by her thick black hair. Her full lips were parted and her dark eyes, winsome and charming, seemed to entice Jack.

He made to stand but Stephen stopped him.

“I wouldn’t approach her if I were you, Jack. You’ve heard the stories of mermaids drowning sailors, haven’t you?”

“Mermaids?” said Jack.

“Well, yes. But they are _Homo piscis_ , I should think. That would be an appropriate scientific term for them. But you may call them mermaids,” said Stephen, looking up for a moment and giving Jack a smile.

“Well, I never. Real mermaids! Wouldn’t Sophie be jealous now! Ha ha ha!” roared Jack, slapping his knee and chortling loudly. At the sound of his laughter, the shiest mermaid slipped under the water, enticed only to come out when Stephen reached down and stroked her cheek.

“Perhaps this experience is not one you ought to share with her,” said Stephen.

Jack grinned. He’d made another attempt to approach the black-haired mermaid when Stephen, his voice at its most peevish, had told him in no uncertain terms that if he could not behave himself, he was not welcome.

“Oh, very well,” huffed Jack and settled down to watch.

Stephen sketched for some time, while the mermaids remained. Two of them seemed restless yet seemed loath to leave Stephen – teasing him with splashes and giggles but not leaving for any length of time.

But after a while, Stephen folded up his work and stowed it away.

“Come, Jack, shouldn’t we be returning to the _Surprise_?”

Jack, whose purpose it had originally been to retrieve Stephen as quickly as possible from his expedition, now found himself in the odd position of wanting to extend the outing.

“You’re not going to take one with you?” said Jack as he stood. His legs were numb, so he must have been sitting for longer than he had thought. A quick glance of the height of the sun in the sky – sitting much lower in the sky than it had been – told him how long he had sat with Stephen and his mermaids.

“Certainly not. They’re hardly my usual specimens. I could no more take any person with me to dissect and study than I could one of them,” said Stephen. “I will, on the other hand, enlist your help in catching a shearwater.”

Jack had not entirely meant that Stephen would dissect the mermaids, but it was no matter.

“Why not? That one would certainly come with you,” he said, and gestured to mermaid who had pulled herself out of the water and laid herself across Stephen’s lap. “Any of them would, to be honest.”

 

*****

 

The sun was even lower in the sky when Stephen and Jack made it back to the boat. The sailors, jerking up to attention from where they had been dozing under the shade of a sail, took little notice of Stephen as he fussed and fumbled with the eggs he had stowed in his coat and the live shearwater he had caged at his side.

“What’re you waiting for? Lively now!” Jack barked, though he enjoyed the looks of astonishment on their faces when, swimming around the rock, leaping up and diving down like dolphins, there came the three mermaids.

“Aye-aye, sir,” said Bonden, his voice weak and thin.

The men stumbled and shook and tripped over themselves as they flew into action.

The mermaids took no notice of any of the men, for they circled around Stephen when he climbed into the boat, paying no other man any mind. Not even the dark-haired one, who Jack fancied favoured him, even turn his way. All three creatures instead clustered around him, chattering in that musical language of theirs.

And when Stephen’s his foot slipped and nearly landed in the water, three pairs of hands held him fast and conveyed him safely into the boat, a far cry from the tales of mermaids pulling sailors down to the depths of the sea.

Then again, Stephen was no sailor.

They pulled away from the rock, the men too disciplined and fearful of Jack’s authority – or so he hoped – to do anything but pull for the _Surprise,_ the three mermaids splashing behind them.

The sun was setting and Jack and Stephen stared back over the sea. Two mermaids fell back, still flashing their fins and leaping, but the one remained. She was the one who had laid herself on Stephen’s lap, the shiest, now came cutting swiftly through the water.

She pulled herself up to the side next to him, cushioning her head on her arms once more. Every head turned to look at her, the sailors bumping their oars together in their distraction.

She spoke a short word and, reaching up, placed a kiss on Stephen’s mouth. No one looked more astonished than he did, the man for once at a loss of words, and looking more smitten than he had even before Diana in all her glory.

One of the sailors gave an incredulous cry:

“Well, I’ll be damned! Did you see that? The doctor got kissed by a bloody mermaid!”


End file.
